Towheeblog

You can now spot local Canada Geese in flight, this year’s goslings fully feathered and in the air with mom, dad, aunts and uncles.  A young junco shows up in our garden.  He was born at least a half mile from our house–Rotary Park is the nearest forest.  The American Goldfinches are losing their bright yellow plumage now, will depart next month.  Bushtits are back in their bunches of 20-30 and won’t break up into pairs until next year’s breeding season.  Flocks of swallows hang out on wires and roof edges.  Soon they will be departing southward.  Bird calls can still be heard but little song.

In our garden we hear the collared-doves cooing,  a Red-breasted Nuthatch honking from a conifer, sometimes the scrub-jay speeds in accompanied by his raucous screams, goldfinches make their “potato-chip” calls are they fly overhead.  Only the sharp call of the flicker, none of his longer rattle call.  Robins don’t deign to sing, nor the House Finches.

Here is half of the pair of Pacific Wrens who scolded me for walking through their territory in the hillside forest at the Trappist Abbey north of Lafayette:

My favorite garden birds are now the trio nuthatches.  They are busily caching seeds for cold weather, using our fence, a trellis, tree bark, what have you.  And then they amuse by hanging upside down.

At the abbey there were Acorn Woodpeckers in the open oak woodlands.  In out garden now we have both species of lowland chickadee; each species sticks to its own.  Bushtits like the bird baths almost as much as the chickadees and nuthatches.  The pewee was hunting two days in a row from the top of the tallest riverside ash tree at the north end of Joe Dancer Park.  I saw a Willow Flycatcher and a Western Tanager there as well one evening this week.

Young red-tail above the abbey:

Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey trails, Yamhill, Oregon, US
Aug 13, 2019
11 species

Mourning Dove  2
Red-tailed Hawk  1
Acorn Woodpecker  4
Northern Flicker  1
Steller’s Jay  1
Barn Swallow  20
House Wren  2
Pacific Wren  2
Dark-eyed Junco  8
White-crowned Sparrow  5
Spotted Towhee  3